Tylendel picked over his words as he finished up a letter to Jeanni. She was still buying time, and he could hardly blame her for doing so. It was a lot of pressure, and the settlement had been in stasis for long enough that she didn't need to rush into anything. He summarized his thoughts and the relevant issues as clearly as he could so that she'd have it for a reference, then stated the time in which a decision should be made—no more than one year, now, and that only if she felt like she needed that long to make a decisive statement. Personally, he felt that if she wanted to delay even half that long, it meant she shouldn't do it, but he couldn't say that despite the desire to. Instead, he just urged her to seek opinions from those around her and those who would want the best for her, and left her with contact info—letters to the collegium or the palace would reach him if addressed to Tylendel Frelennye, though it may need to wait until he were back from any mission; in the meantime, it would be best to send information care of his old friend and teacher Savil.
He was just signing the missive when Vanyel entered the room in a rush, shutting the door and locking it behind him, staring at Tylendel like his gray eyes were about to fall out of his shaven head.
Tylendel opened his mouth to ask what was wrong when Vanyel's feelings hit him. That strange wall was shattered. It reminded him of magic gone wrong, like Vanyel had made some kind of false shield that had rebounded on him finally, leaving him raw and burned inside. His distress made the air so thick that Tylendel thought there was a haze in it. It was almost impossible to pick out individual notes, especially with his own senses dulled as soon as he tried to focus, but there was rage in there, fear, guilt, and (strangely) some kind of deep hunger.
"This is a trap," Vanyel hissed at him, accusatory and hurt. "This is a trap! You're here to trap me."
"What—?" Tylendel stared at him, confused by his words and shocked by the intensity.
"Savil. You mentioned a Savil before. I have an aunt Savil. My father's sister." He was almost raving, chest heaving with his deep breaths, with the effort of keeping his voice low so nobody else would hear him through the thin walls. "Lord Withen talked to my aunt and had you sent here to tempt me. Father Brevec's in my father's pocket; that's why I'm here, that's why he could send his goddamn—the goddamn son of—what's my family name?!"
Tylendel opened his mouth and closed it. Vanyel was staring at him in utter panic now, and Tylendel couldn't even begin to know where to start with the sudden rant and the hysterical implications of conspiracy. Alarmed, trying to pick his words carefully, he said, "Savil's ... family name is Ashkevron...?"
"Yes... yes. Yes! I'm Vanyel Ashkevron!" Vanyel seemed almost about to start crying, tears welling up in his eyes, but instead he grew angry again, like he didn't know how to cry. Or, worse, didn't dare to. "And my father had me locked away here and you were sent to tempt me! To see if I'd sleep with you! And if it sounds like I did, if there's any sign, he'll tell my father... he'll tell my father and he'll never, ever approve of me..."
It was a jumbled, incoherent mess, and Tylendel raised both hands. "Hang on," he said. "Who was sent to tempt who?"
"You were! Because I'm—because my father knows, thinks I'm—" Vanyel shut up abruptly, trembling, clearly afraid—maybe for good reason—that someone was listening. His voice dropped to a whisper. "If I'm not reformed, Father won't call me home to be heir. If I'm not obedient. Manly. He'll never approve of me."
:Gala. Didn't Savil have a nephew who went missing?:
:Not missing. It's as the boy's saying.: Gala's usually-teasing voice had dropped all pretense at humor. :It was a few years ago, but don't you remember the letter? Savil cursing and insisting she was going to kill her brother?:
He did, now Gala mentioned the details. It hadn't been his business, and not the first time that Savil had grousingly threatened her brother, so he hadn't paid it too much mind. Vaguely, he recalled that Savil's brother had queried if he could have sent his son to be 'toughened up' by Savil, but had changed his mind when he'd heard about her training Tylendel. That there was no way she could help him become a man. Even secondhand, it had hurt a little.
:And she...said that he decided to send his son to a monastery instead. That's right. She couldn't intervene because he was sixteen and Withen was his guardian, so legally Withen's decisions had to stick. But that was years ago: Tylendel blinked.
Gala sent him some encouragement, wordless, and he steeled himself a little.
"How old are you?" Tylendel asked.
Vanyel stared at him, trembling. His voice came out in a whisper. "Eighteen."
Eighteen. Just a year younger than him. He thought of his father's old threats to cast him out and felt the worst sort of sympathy curl in him. "Then you don't need to stay here. You're legally an adult now. You can leave. You don't need your father's permission—"
"Not permission," Vanyel whispered. "Approval. I don't have anything else. I don't want anything else, not anymore. I can't play music. I don't have anywhere to go. Without the Ashkevron name I have no money either. No way to make it. If Father approves of me I'll at least have that. I hate it here. I hate it there. But I hate it everywhere, so at least I'd have that."
Gods. The boy seemed almost broken. This gambit to make a good obedient son out of Vanyel had done horrible damage to him, Tylendel thought. Faced with nothing, he'd become this cold, sharp-edged thing, barely a person, cutting down every possible emotional attachment to the people around him and showing obsequience for the approval of those above him.
"Alright," Tylendel said. He spoke calmly and quietly, like trying to calm a spooked horse, one hand toward him with an open palm. Vanyel was in a panic and the only way to get through to him would be to make the truth too clear to deny. "I wasn't sent here by Savil to trap you. Believe me, I didn't want an arrow to the leg either. That injury was real enough. You saw it, right? I didn't do that to myself."
"That's..." Vanyel hesitated.
"I know you won't believe me when I say that Savil would never do such a thing," Tylendel said evenly. "I know her, but you don't. However, she wouldn't. I'm not disagreeing that you might have people trapping or testing you, but Savil wasn't a part of it, and I wasn't either. If you're right and it is a trap? It's just that I showed up; my reputation as someone shay'a'chern preceded me, and the Father decided to test you like that."
Although the foreign word was obviously going over Vanyel's head, the meaning in context was clear enough. "That's too convenient," Vanyel said, almost silent. "Do you expect me to believe that?"
"I'm a Herald," Tylendel said. "I would never, ever, ever take advantage of someone. I want you to believe that. Surely you know enough about Heralds to know that I'd never let myself be used to harm an innocent. Savil, too, is a famous Herald. Our job, our calling is to protect people who need to be protected. To help the helpless." He tried to project his earnestness, meeting Vanyel's eyes and not looking away, and could tell that trying to explain how abhorrent that would be to a Herald meant nothing to Vanyel. He tried taking another tack. "Besides, I do prefer men. I don't have anything against people like me. Obviously! Why would I want to trap anyone else into getting found out? Why would I want anyone to be punished for that?"
Vanyel's eyes widened; Tylendel saw that line of reasoning sink home with a dawning understanding and pain. For a moment, he thought he had him.
And then Vanyel's shoulders slumped completely. On the one hand, the fight had gone out of him. On the other hand, the feeling that was welling from him—equal parts despair and that hunger again—had become nearly overwhelming.
"It doesn't matter," Vanyel breathed. "It doesn't matter whether you meant to be involved or not. I don't care... I need Father's approval. I have nothing else in life except the Father's approval."
It was chilling. Tylendel realized impulsively that Vanyel was making no distinction between Father Brevec or his own father any more. That, in some way, it had become a strange, enormous mass of simply needing to be obedient to authority.
He was broken. Completely.
"If you'll excuse me," Vanyel whispered. Behind himself, he unlatched the door again. "I need to sleep in the library tonight. You leave tomorrow, and then everything will be normal again, and they'll know I didn't give in."
Before Tylendel could protest again, he was gone.
***
So cold.
Vanyel hadn't brought a blanket with him to the library. Hadn't thought about anything except getting out of that room. He found a nook in the library and curled up as tightly as he could, holding his own knees, dropping his head to them and trying to contain what little warmth he had left in his body. Slowly, almost against his will, one of his hands rose to rub against the minuscule spikes of hair on his scalp, sharp and abrasive against his palm, not how it should be. He remembered how proud he'd been of his hair, long and elegant. His mother's ladies would play with it, twist it into different styles. He wondered how it would feel to have someone else do it instead, someone he wanted to play with it.
It doesn't matter, he tried to tell himself, bitter, but he couldn't quite bring himself back the place where he felt that way. It was missing, that spot where being miserable almost made him secure, where he could just stop thinking and feeling and exist moment to moment in a thick shroud of his own hatred.
Breathing was hard. Toward the end, talking to that Herald, he'd been afraid of being overheard, but also had simply been unable to get words out with any strength. His throat had closed like it was going to choke him. Everything inside him had felt sharp, like he was going to cut himself open on his own feelings.
And he'd wanted. That was the worst possible scenario, wanting things again. He'd wanted Tylendel to promise that he hadn't tried to trap him. He'd wanted Tylendel to reach out to him. When the Herald had done both those things, he'd wanted assurance that it would be okay. That everything would be fine now. That he could have something other than this life of constant vigilance and misery.
That wasn't something he could have.
When he was here, he had nothing to do except what he was told. He had nothing to do but wait for his performances of obedience to make him acceptable. He didn't have to want anything, and he didn't have to get hurt. It wasn't like before, in Forst Reach, where he constantly wanted to be acknowledged, wanted people to know he was smart, capable, had his own way of doing things, talented. Where he wanted to have his own personality and talents mean something, rather than just be something for them to scorn him for. He'd desperately wanted to be a Bard. To fight his own way. To learn the things that interested him. For who he was to be more than simply his father's son.
And now he knew: nothing he could have done would have helped that.
Because what he was good at, what he liked, was what made him so abhorrent to his family. To everyone except his sister—what was her name? He couldn't remember. But to his mother, it made him a pet. To his father, it made him fey. It didn't matter that he'd never even realized that was possible, that his treatment had started long before he were capable of wanting another man. It didn't matter that he'd never once taken action to sin with boys, as the other novices had put it.
All that mattered was that he wasn't what his father wanted.
He wanted to cry, but couldn't. He wanted to scream, but couldn't. He wanted—
Those beautiful brown eyes, staring at him with genuine, true concern. A hand outstretched towards him; meant to be appeal, but looking too much like an invitation. A face Vanyel had finally been able to find beautiful, after so many years of looking at the wrong faces and not being able to feel anything at all.
All the time that he'd been irritated about sharing space with Herald Tylendel, had that irritation, that awareness been as much desire as it had been fear? Without knowing a thing, without being able to put a word to it, had he wanted the Herald—for his looks, his body, that firm thigh under his hand when he'd bound his injury? Or, worse, for his freedom, his ability to make choices that even the queen would listen to, to ride wherever he wanted and be accepted for who he was and how he was by everyone who met him, regardless of what they felt about him?
But desire was the enemy. Desire was a fearful, wrong thing which would get rid of the ice if he let himself feel it. It wouldn't give him anything; it'd just make him want things he couldn't have, hurting for no good reason.
If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval.
He repeated it like a prayer, a mantra to keep himself going, to keep himself centered, to the point that words stopped having any meaning. Eventually, it relaxed him. Eventually, he began to drift to sleep, and lose hold of the words, and instead he thought:
FILL: Tylendel/Vanyel - Orders - 3/?
He was just signing the missive when Vanyel entered the room in a rush, shutting the door and locking it behind him, staring at Tylendel like his gray eyes were about to fall out of his shaven head.
Tylendel opened his mouth to ask what was wrong when Vanyel's feelings hit him. That strange wall was shattered. It reminded him of magic gone wrong, like Vanyel had made some kind of false shield that had rebounded on him finally, leaving him raw and burned inside. His distress made the air so thick that Tylendel thought there was a haze in it. It was almost impossible to pick out individual notes, especially with his own senses dulled as soon as he tried to focus, but there was rage in there, fear, guilt, and (strangely) some kind of deep hunger.
"This is a trap," Vanyel hissed at him, accusatory and hurt. "This is a trap! You're here to trap me."
"What—?" Tylendel stared at him, confused by his words and shocked by the intensity.
"Savil. You mentioned a Savil before. I have an aunt Savil. My father's sister." He was almost raving, chest heaving with his deep breaths, with the effort of keeping his voice low so nobody else would hear him through the thin walls. "Lord Withen talked to my aunt and had you sent here to tempt me. Father Brevec's in my father's pocket; that's why I'm here, that's why he could send his goddamn—the goddamn son of—what's my family name?!"
Tylendel opened his mouth and closed it. Vanyel was staring at him in utter panic now, and Tylendel couldn't even begin to know where to start with the sudden rant and the hysterical implications of conspiracy. Alarmed, trying to pick his words carefully, he said, "Savil's ... family name is Ashkevron...?"
"Yes... yes. Yes! I'm Vanyel Ashkevron!" Vanyel seemed almost about to start crying, tears welling up in his eyes, but instead he grew angry again, like he didn't know how to cry. Or, worse, didn't dare to. "And my father had me locked away here and you were sent to tempt me! To see if I'd sleep with you! And if it sounds like I did, if there's any sign, he'll tell my father... he'll tell my father and he'll never, ever approve of me..."
It was a jumbled, incoherent mess, and Tylendel raised both hands. "Hang on," he said. "Who was sent to tempt who?"
"You were! Because I'm—because my father knows, thinks I'm—" Vanyel shut up abruptly, trembling, clearly afraid—maybe for good reason—that someone was listening. His voice dropped to a whisper. "If I'm not reformed, Father won't call me home to be heir. If I'm not obedient. Manly. He'll never approve of me."
:Gala. Didn't Savil have a nephew who went missing?:
:Not missing. It's as the boy's saying.: Gala's usually-teasing voice had dropped all pretense at humor. :It was a few years ago, but don't you remember the letter? Savil cursing and insisting she was going to kill her brother?:
He did, now Gala mentioned the details. It hadn't been his business, and not the first time that Savil had grousingly threatened her brother, so he hadn't paid it too much mind. Vaguely, he recalled that Savil's brother had queried if he could have sent his son to be 'toughened up' by Savil, but had changed his mind when he'd heard about her training Tylendel. That there was no way she could help him become a man. Even secondhand, it had hurt a little.
:And she...said that he decided to send his son to a monastery instead. That's right. She couldn't intervene because he was sixteen and Withen was his guardian, so legally Withen's decisions had to stick. But that was years ago: Tylendel blinked.
Gala sent him some encouragement, wordless, and he steeled himself a little.
"How old are you?" Tylendel asked.
Vanyel stared at him, trembling. His voice came out in a whisper. "Eighteen."
Eighteen. Just a year younger than him. He thought of his father's old threats to cast him out and felt the worst sort of sympathy curl in him. "Then you don't need to stay here. You're legally an adult now. You can leave. You don't need your father's permission—"
"Not permission," Vanyel whispered. "Approval. I don't have anything else. I don't want anything else, not anymore. I can't play music. I don't have anywhere to go. Without the Ashkevron name I have no money either. No way to make it. If Father approves of me I'll at least have that. I hate it here. I hate it there. But I hate it everywhere, so at least I'd have that."
Gods. The boy seemed almost broken. This gambit to make a good obedient son out of Vanyel had done horrible damage to him, Tylendel thought. Faced with nothing, he'd become this cold, sharp-edged thing, barely a person, cutting down every possible emotional attachment to the people around him and showing obsequience for the approval of those above him.
"Alright," Tylendel said. He spoke calmly and quietly, like trying to calm a spooked horse, one hand toward him with an open palm. Vanyel was in a panic and the only way to get through to him would be to make the truth too clear to deny. "I wasn't sent here by Savil to trap you. Believe me, I didn't want an arrow to the leg either. That injury was real enough. You saw it, right? I didn't do that to myself."
"That's..." Vanyel hesitated.
"I know you won't believe me when I say that Savil would never do such a thing," Tylendel said evenly. "I know her, but you don't. However, she wouldn't. I'm not disagreeing that you might have people trapping or testing you, but Savil wasn't a part of it, and I wasn't either. If you're right and it is a trap? It's just that I showed up; my reputation as someone shay'a'chern preceded me, and the Father decided to test you like that."
Although the foreign word was obviously going over Vanyel's head, the meaning in context was clear enough. "That's too convenient," Vanyel said, almost silent. "Do you expect me to believe that?"
"I'm a Herald," Tylendel said. "I would never, ever, ever take advantage of someone. I want you to believe that. Surely you know enough about Heralds to know that I'd never let myself be used to harm an innocent. Savil, too, is a famous Herald. Our job, our calling is to protect people who need to be protected. To help the helpless." He tried to project his earnestness, meeting Vanyel's eyes and not looking away, and could tell that trying to explain how abhorrent that would be to a Herald meant nothing to Vanyel. He tried taking another tack. "Besides, I do prefer men. I don't have anything against people like me. Obviously! Why would I want to trap anyone else into getting found out? Why would I want anyone to be punished for that?"
Vanyel's eyes widened; Tylendel saw that line of reasoning sink home with a dawning understanding and pain. For a moment, he thought he had him.
And then Vanyel's shoulders slumped completely. On the one hand, the fight had gone out of him. On the other hand, the feeling that was welling from him—equal parts despair and that hunger again—had become nearly overwhelming.
"It doesn't matter," Vanyel breathed. "It doesn't matter whether you meant to be involved or not. I don't care... I need Father's approval. I have nothing else in life except the Father's approval."
It was chilling. Tylendel realized impulsively that Vanyel was making no distinction between Father Brevec or his own father any more. That, in some way, it had become a strange, enormous mass of simply needing to be obedient to authority.
He was broken. Completely.
"If you'll excuse me," Vanyel whispered. Behind himself, he unlatched the door again. "I need to sleep in the library tonight. You leave tomorrow, and then everything will be normal again, and they'll know I didn't give in."
Before Tylendel could protest again, he was gone.
***
So cold.
Vanyel hadn't brought a blanket with him to the library. Hadn't thought about anything except getting out of that room. He found a nook in the library and curled up as tightly as he could, holding his own knees, dropping his head to them and trying to contain what little warmth he had left in his body. Slowly, almost against his will, one of his hands rose to rub against the minuscule spikes of hair on his scalp, sharp and abrasive against his palm, not how it should be. He remembered how proud he'd been of his hair, long and elegant. His mother's ladies would play with it, twist it into different styles. He wondered how it would feel to have someone else do it instead, someone he wanted to play with it.
It doesn't matter, he tried to tell himself, bitter, but he couldn't quite bring himself back the place where he felt that way. It was missing, that spot where being miserable almost made him secure, where he could just stop thinking and feeling and exist moment to moment in a thick shroud of his own hatred.
Breathing was hard. Toward the end, talking to that Herald, he'd been afraid of being overheard, but also had simply been unable to get words out with any strength. His throat had closed like it was going to choke him. Everything inside him had felt sharp, like he was going to cut himself open on his own feelings.
And he'd wanted. That was the worst possible scenario, wanting things again. He'd wanted Tylendel to promise that he hadn't tried to trap him. He'd wanted Tylendel to reach out to him. When the Herald had done both those things, he'd wanted assurance that it would be okay. That everything would be fine now. That he could have something other than this life of constant vigilance and misery.
That wasn't something he could have.
When he was here, he had nothing to do except what he was told. He had nothing to do but wait for his performances of obedience to make him acceptable. He didn't have to want anything, and he didn't have to get hurt. It wasn't like before, in Forst Reach, where he constantly wanted to be acknowledged, wanted people to know he was smart, capable, had his own way of doing things, talented. Where he wanted to have his own personality and talents mean something, rather than just be something for them to scorn him for. He'd desperately wanted to be a Bard. To fight his own way. To learn the things that interested him. For who he was to be more than simply his father's son.
And now he knew: nothing he could have done would have helped that.
Because what he was good at, what he liked, was what made him so abhorrent to his family. To everyone except his sister—what was her name? He couldn't remember. But to his mother, it made him a pet. To his father, it made him fey. It didn't matter that he'd never even realized that was possible, that his treatment had started long before he were capable of wanting another man. It didn't matter that he'd never once taken action to sin with boys, as the other novices had put it.
All that mattered was that he wasn't what his father wanted.
He wanted to cry, but couldn't. He wanted to scream, but couldn't. He wanted—
Those beautiful brown eyes, staring at him with genuine, true concern. A hand outstretched towards him; meant to be appeal, but looking too much like an invitation. A face Vanyel had finally been able to find beautiful, after so many years of looking at the wrong faces and not being able to feel anything at all.
All the time that he'd been irritated about sharing space with Herald Tylendel, had that irritation, that awareness been as much desire as it had been fear? Without knowing a thing, without being able to put a word to it, had he wanted the Herald—for his looks, his body, that firm thigh under his hand when he'd bound his injury? Or, worse, for his freedom, his ability to make choices that even the queen would listen to, to ride wherever he wanted and be accepted for who he was and how he was by everyone who met him, regardless of what they felt about him?
But desire was the enemy. Desire was a fearful, wrong thing which would get rid of the ice if he let himself feel it. It wouldn't give him anything; it'd just make him want things he couldn't have, hurting for no good reason.
If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval. If I can just endure this I'll get my father's approval.
He repeated it like a prayer, a mantra to keep himself going, to keep himself centered, to the point that words stopped having any meaning. Eventually, it relaxed him. Eventually, he began to drift to sleep, and lose hold of the words, and instead he thought:
Then what?
What's for me there?
Will it mean something?
Will I begin to live again?
I don't even want to.